It's almost certainly a hoax, of course. I'm fairly certain there's never been a bomb threat on an American school where there turned out to be an actual bomb.<p>Not once in any school in the United States, ever in the entire history of the nation.<p>I've really looked for a counterexample, but I haven't found any. If any of you have one, I'd love to hear it.
It's not just Austin: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19602986" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19602986</a><p>I've heard from a friend in Austin that this is a hoax. Sounds like this might be related to the anti-Islam film.
Bruce Schneier wrote an excellent piece about this very topic back in April. It's worth a read: <a href="http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/bomb_threats_as.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/bomb_threats_a...</a><p>(Reader comments are great, too.)
What perplexes me is that the threat was called in at around 8:30 am and claimed bombs will go off around 10 am. UT made the decision to evacuate at 9:53 am, 7 minutes before the called threat. Is 7 minutes an ample amount of time to evacuate a campus this large?
North Dakota State University has been evacuated as well.<p><a href="http://www.chron.com/communityblogs/atmosphere/article/North-Dakota-State-evacuated-3865583.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.chron.com/communityblogs/atmosphere/article/North...</a>